Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players.

We have no direct quote from KP and his growth did not statistically regress as depicted. All but THJ are isiah guys long gone, and NENE was never a knick. At the same time he says the current "Mission" compounds the issue with the young players. Well, don't we want young players?

His depiction of Kurt is off base. He is not the head coach. His record of 9-19 is not relevant either. He was not made the head coach. If there is a current problem with Kurt, its RUMORED that players hate his ass. If so, its a problem. If they are tuning him out that could be something they need to fix. But Writer is stale on this.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

So bascially his long winded point about PHil bashing Melo is really "Phil is right, but he is an arsehole about it"...... PHil as always been an arsehole about a lot of things. He has a long history of being blunt about fans in other cities, Smells, culture, etc. He is a blunt 11 chip Dyke of a man who knows basketball. Nothing new.

Thats all I have time for. Its an entertaining read and this is just my take. Martin has his own im sure.To me it was presented with glee as another validation of why phil needs to go. NY media will have many of the same things written but redundancy does not validate as much as fresh facts or concepts.This writer has a good style, but he is no expert, former player, former coach, etc to lend cred to. He is regurgitating the same thing many of you have bought up before. Phil is the most decorated coach in the history of the game and along the way he made lots of enemies along the way.

Guess what, Phil has been an arsehole since he started winning rings. Don't mean the guy is stupid.

Knicks1248:
1. Dolan should be more involved! 2. Why would any knick fan want pick 8, when that spot has a history of producing marginal NBA taken. (He prefers pick 9th instead)

After his first season as Knicks coach, Hornacek is still trying to incorporate a system that is foreign to him, armed with a Jackson-installed assistant coach, Kurt Rambis, who is beyond unpopular with the players, league sources said. When players want coaching and teaching, they get yelling, sources said. Most wonder about Rambis’ allegiances, because after all, he’s Jackson’s guy, not Hornacek’s.

The Knicks will revisit Anthony trade talks closer to the NBA draft in June, but Jackson’s strategy of publicly pushing Anthony out of town has backfired. So far, it’s made Anthony want to dig in to the final two years left on his contract and outlast Jackson’s regime.

For the Knicks and Jackson, though, Porzingis’ growing disillusionment threatens the Knicks’ flimsy foundation. Two years ago, Porzingis walked into New York as an earnest, eager 7-foot-3 talent who has been relentless in his work habits and appetite for professional growth. He trusted former coach Derek Fisher and the individual instruction delivered to him, league sources said. Beyond Jackson’s anger with Fisher moving away from the triangle, there were disagreements about how to use Porzingis in the offense and about how to approach his skill development, league sources said.

THIS IS ALL OVER THE INTERNET

I know, I can't go anywhere without seeing This!!!!!

Reality is if Rambis is not communicating his knowledge in a productive manner, Jeff should see him out the door with Phils blessing.Do we not allow coach's to yell anymore?

It is well publicized that todays players can't handle yelling. They tend to curl up into a ball in a corner. All I know Greg Popovich yells at his players all the time he is always riding them.

Pop can do it because winners don't need humility when you got cred.Phil don't have exec cred, but he has more rings than fingers.Riley had rings, and had lots of arrogance as an exec early on with little to show for it. His Miami teams only got by knicks when PJ brown tossed Charlie!But eventually Riles got his Miami Rings and he was cool again!!Phil is not handsome like Riles and not nearly as cool. His arrogance is not as smooth.

Knicks1248:
1. Dolan should be more involved! 2. Why would any knick fan want pick 8, when that spot has a history of producing marginal NBA taken. (He prefers pick 9th instead)

Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players.

We have no direct quote from KP and his growth did not statistically regress as depicted. All but THJ are isiah guys long gone, and NENE was never a knick. At the same time he says the current "Mission" compounds the issue with the young players. Well, don't we want young players?

His depiction of Kurt is off base. He is not the head coach. His record of 9-19 is not relevant either. He was not made the head coach. If there is a current problem with Kurt, its RUMORED that players hate his ass. If so, its a problem. If they are tuning him out that could be something they need to fix. But Writer is stale on this.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

So bascially his long winded point about PHil bashing Melo is really "Phil is right, but he is an arsehole about it"...... PHil as always been an arsehole about a lot of things. He has a long history of being blunt about fans in other cities, Smells, culture, etc. He is a blunt 11 chip Dyke of a man who knows basketball. Nothing new.

Thats all I have time for. Its an entertaining read and this is just my take. Martin has his own im sure.To me it was presented with glee as another validation of why phil needs to go. NY media will have many of the same things written but redundancy does not validate as much as fresh facts or concepts.This writer has a good style, but he is no expert, former player, former coach, etc to lend cred to. He is regurgitating the same thing many of you have bought up before. Phil is the most decorated coach in the history of the game and along the way he made lots of enemies along the way.

Guess what, Phil has been an arsehole since he started winning rings. Don't mean the guy is stupid.

IMO, its probably best for the board to agree to disagree. Although boards are made for disagreements. IMO, Their have been many exapmles of Phil's inability to improve the perception of the franchise, team chemistry, team culture and show any professional executive atributes. However, think more articles will continue to come out, as it is the popular topic. Starting to be redundant at this point. As was with Trump, there is no point to argue after the decision was made. Dolan has chosen and there is nothing we can say or do about it. So may be time to move on and focus on other aspects of the Knicks. The Phil supporters can find solice in thinking the future is bright. I dont think so but again, Dolan has chosen and its better to have a positive outlook. Biggest worry right now is that KP, our future, may be plotting an exit strategy in just his second year. Hopefully we can get a couple of good picks and trade Melo to a destination that bring us back some talent that can change our losing ways. Think winning solves everthing.

The king of the triangle is gesturing at accountability while passing the buck — and alienating his team’s longest-tenured player

In March 2014, when James Dolan, the rumpled regional cable empire heir and owner of the Knicks, hired Phil Jackson, the move was simultaneously the team’s best hope at a return to relevance and a philosophical dead end. Best hope because Jackson’s unparalleled résumé of 11 NBA championships brought much-needed gravitas to the three-ring clown orgy Knicks, a team that had once considered the tottering zombie Andrea Bargnani as a building block of a championship squad. Dead end because the Knicks’ raison d’etre has always been the acquisition of big names — even if those big names are past their prime. Few come larger or more respected than Phil, and optimistic Knicks fans talked themselves into their peyote-loving savior. The subtext of the hire was this question: What would happen if even the winningest coach in NBA history — the man who shepherded Jordan and Pippen and Kobe and Shaq to the mountaintop again and again and again — couldn’t pull the sword from the stone? What would that look like?The answer is several new species of Knicks ineptitude: an unhinged, quasi-religious fervor for robotic pinch-post actions; a player rebellion; an unexplained disappearance; the owner accusing fans of being alcoholics; the gaslighting of the team’s best player via paternalistic old-man blog ****ery; an iconic ex-player dragged bodily from his courtside seat and arrested on national television. And the old standbys which fans have come to know and loathe: a depressing on-court product, swollen contracts for players with shipwrecked bodies, a public relations regime that treats team news like state secrets, and the prospect of losing a beloved player to the churn of incompetence.

On April 14, Jackson gave his end-of-the-season press conference at the Knicks’ practice facility in Westchester. It was a fascinating display of solipsism masquerading as love for the game. Jackson proclaimed that Carmelo Anthony would “be better off somewhere else.” Beyond the spectacle of a team’s president rhetorically cutting bait with its star, this is notable because one of Jackson’s first moves was to sign Melo to a five-year, $125 million extension which included a no-trade clause. This was Jackson being too Machiavellian by half. The only reason to agree to a no-trade was to shift responsibility for any future deal onto Melo’s shoulders. The aim was an abdication of blame; the effect was a surrender of agency. Any trade involving Melo now requires his consent. Compounding this difficulty, Jackson’s comments effectively undercut his ability to recoup anything resembling value since now everyone knows he wants to move Melo. The stated reason that Anthony needs to go is, of course, his incompatibility with the triangle offense. “We haven’t won with him,” Jackson said of Melo. Anthony, in 2012–13, powered the Knicks to 54 wins and the franchise’s lone playoff series victory in the past 15 years. In Jackson’s three full seasons as president, New York won 17, 32, and 31 games.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

Jackson cares more about rehabilitating the triangle offense than he does about the Knicks. The team and its players are simply the vehicle, and the coaches are his proxies. Meanwhile, the players, according to numerous reports, don’t want to play the system. “We faced resistance. We faced it from the top,” Phil said when asked why the system hasn’t taken root in New York. In truth, the system, lacking GREATEST EVER–caliber personnel, has struggled to do anything except confuse players and lose games in large numbers.

In addition to handicapping the Knicks’ best players, Phil has also empowered the wrong people. There’s years of evidence that Kurt Rambis is a bad coach. He won 32 games — combined — in two years as the head coach of the Timberwolves, and coached the Knicks to a 9–19 record after taking over for Derek Fisher during the 2015–16 season. This season, his portfolio, outside of being Phil’s supervisor of ideological purity, is ostensibly to manage the defense. He did so to little discernible effect; the Knicks were one of the worst defensive teams in the entire league. The team is slightly below league average offensively, and looked, at times, pretty good on that side, especially when they weren’t running the triangle. Rambis is secure, though, despite all of this because, Jackson says, “Kurt has all the knowledge I have.” Which, again, is knowledge that’s been proved mostly useless in today’s NBA.

Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players. When asked at his end-of-year talk what he liked from KP this season, Jackson said, in part, that he was proud of a game in which Porzingis didn’t take a 3 because “they’re a cheap way to get points.” WHY DON’T YOU WANT YOUR TEAM GETTING CHEAP POINTS, JACKSON? The Houston Rockets are one of the best teams in the league based wholly on a strategy of let’s just go for all the cheapest baskets. The Knicks are in disarray, their players are in revolt, and their brightest young talent is already looking elsewhere. This guy should be fired immediately.

Allow me to sprinkle a few more choice Jackson quotes from his recent press conference on this feces sandwich that is the New York Knicks organization.On Joakim Noah, whose body is disintegrating like a sand castle at high tide, and who still has three years remaining on the deal Phil signed him to: “He’s 31. He’s still relatively young.”

On Derrick Rose, who is bad and disappeared at one point: “Someone told me today that he’s still a leading guy in the league in scoring in the paint.”

On the triangle: “Somehow or another we got completely off course here in the idea that a system of basketball, particularly the triangle offensive, is an impediment to a basketball team. It’s not an impediment.” Phil’s Knicks have never made the playoffs and his players don’t want to play the triangle.On his players: “There’s some rebelliousness to this team.”

The last quote gets to the heart of it. Teams are made up of individuals with their own goals. If Jackson hasn’t been able to convince them, by now, that the triangle would benefit them — that it could make them better players, or at least help them land that next contract — then the failure is his. Not theirs. Time for Phil to go.

Would agree that Phil is more concerned about his true Legacy, the Triangle and not the Knicks. His biggest crutch, in spite of winning so many rings, is people like us saying it was not his coaching but rather having some of the best players of All Time. Think he is trying to remove all doubt. I still think he was a good coach. But just dont think he nor the Triangle were as great as he thinks they were.

1)Talent2)Defense 3)Establish a team culture centered around team basketball

In every move Phil has made and will make, you have to ask yourself did Phil's move accomplish this in the long term? The number of moves where it did so compared to the number of moves where they didn't accomplish this determines how good of a GM he is.

With regards to the triangle, I believe that it is a red herring. It doesn't matter what system you are running, the best and willling players are going to exceed, which in turn is going to lead to wins. As many of you all have said, you could play Kobe/Jordan in a line, square, rhombus, trapezoid, tetrahedron or whatever, then they would still win games. Basketball isn't soccer where formations can be so critical to getting the best outta players. At the end of the day, if you can get talent that want to play for the team and win games then the triangle can fit almost anybody type of player one way or another. The key is just off ball movement, lots of passing, and the player and the complete players are the focal point of the triangle. These key concepts are the same for almost every other offense.

The king of the triangle is gesturing at accountability while passing the buck — and alienating his team’s longest-tenured player

In March 2014, when James Dolan, the rumpled regional cable empire heir and owner of the Knicks, hired Phil Jackson, the move was simultaneously the team’s best hope at a return to relevance and a philosophical dead end. Best hope because Jackson’s unparalleled résumé of 11 NBA championships brought much-needed gravitas to the three-ring clown orgy Knicks, a team that had once considered the tottering zombie Andrea Bargnani as a building block of a championship squad. Dead end because the Knicks’ raison d’etre has always been the acquisition of big names — even if those big names are past their prime. Few come larger or more respected than Phil, and optimistic Knicks fans talked themselves into their peyote-loving savior. The subtext of the hire was this question: What would happen if even the winningest coach in NBA history — the man who shepherded Jordan and Pippen and Kobe and Shaq to the mountaintop again and again and again — couldn’t pull the sword from the stone? What would that look like?The answer is several new species of Knicks ineptitude: an unhinged, quasi-religious fervor for robotic pinch-post actions; a player rebellion; an unexplained disappearance; the owner accusing fans of being alcoholics; the gaslighting of the team’s best player via paternalistic old-man blog ****ery; an iconic ex-player dragged bodily from his courtside seat and arrested on national television. And the old standbys which fans have come to know and loathe: a depressing on-court product, swollen contracts for players with shipwrecked bodies, a public relations regime that treats team news like state secrets, and the prospect of losing a beloved player to the churn of incompetence.

On April 14, Jackson gave his end-of-the-season press conference at the Knicks’ practice facility in Westchester. It was a fascinating display of solipsism masquerading as love for the game. Jackson proclaimed that Carmelo Anthony would “be better off somewhere else.” Beyond the spectacle of a team’s president rhetorically cutting bait with its star, this is notable because one of Jackson’s first moves was to sign Melo to a five-year, $125 million extension which included a no-trade clause. This was Jackson being too Machiavellian by half. The only reason to agree to a no-trade was to shift responsibility for any future deal onto Melo’s shoulders. The aim was an abdication of blame; the effect was a surrender of agency. Any trade involving Melo now requires his consent. Compounding this difficulty, Jackson’s comments effectively undercut his ability to recoup anything resembling value since now everyone knows he wants to move Melo. The stated reason that Anthony needs to go is, of course, his incompatibility with the triangle offense. “We haven’t won with him,” Jackson said of Melo. Anthony, in 2012–13, powered the Knicks to 54 wins and the franchise’s lone playoff series victory in the past 15 years. In Jackson’s three full seasons as president, New York won 17, 32, and 31 games.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

Jackson cares more about rehabilitating the triangle offense than he does about the Knicks. The team and its players are simply the vehicle, and the coaches are his proxies. Meanwhile, the players, according to numerous reports, don’t want to play the system. “We faced resistance. We faced it from the top,” Phil said when asked why the system hasn’t taken root in New York. In truth, the system, lacking GREATEST EVER–caliber personnel, has struggled to do anything except confuse players and lose games in large numbers.

In addition to handicapping the Knicks’ best players, Phil has also empowered the wrong people. There’s years of evidence that Kurt Rambis is a bad coach. He won 32 games — combined — in two years as the head coach of the Timberwolves, and coached the Knicks to a 9–19 record after taking over for Derek Fisher during the 2015–16 season. This season, his portfolio, outside of being Phil’s supervisor of ideological purity, is ostensibly to manage the defense. He did so to little discernible effect; the Knicks were one of the worst defensive teams in the entire league. The team is slightly below league average offensively, and looked, at times, pretty good on that side, especially when they weren’t running the triangle. Rambis is secure, though, despite all of this because, Jackson says, “Kurt has all the knowledge I have.” Which, again, is knowledge that’s been proved mostly useless in today’s NBA.

Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players. When asked at his end-of-year talk what he liked from KP this season, Jackson said, in part, that he was proud of a game in which Porzingis didn’t take a 3 because “they’re a cheap way to get points.” WHY DON’T YOU WANT YOUR TEAM GETTING CHEAP POINTS, JACKSON? The Houston Rockets are one of the best teams in the league based wholly on a strategy of let’s just go for all the cheapest baskets. The Knicks are in disarray, their players are in revolt, and their brightest young talent is already looking elsewhere. This guy should be fired immediately.

Allow me to sprinkle a few more choice Jackson quotes from his recent press conference on this feces sandwich that is the New York Knicks organization.On Joakim Noah, whose body is disintegrating like a sand castle at high tide, and who still has three years remaining on the deal Phil signed him to: “He’s 31. He’s still relatively young.”

On Derrick Rose, who is bad and disappeared at one point: “Someone told me today that he’s still a leading guy in the league in scoring in the paint.”

On the triangle: “Somehow or another we got completely off course here in the idea that a system of basketball, particularly the triangle offensive, is an impediment to a basketball team. It’s not an impediment.” Phil’s Knicks have never made the playoffs and his players don’t want to play the triangle.On his players: “There’s some rebelliousness to this team.”

The last quote gets to the heart of it. Teams are made up of individuals with their own goals. If Jackson hasn’t been able to convince them, by now, that the triangle would benefit them — that it could make them better players, or at least help them land that next contract — then the failure is his. Not theirs. Time for Phil to go.

Would agree that Phil is more concerned about his true Legacy, the Triangle and not the Knicks. His biggest crutch, in spite of winning so many rings, is people like us saying it was not his coaching but rather having some of the best players of All Time. Think he is trying to remove all doubt. I still think he was a good coach. But just dont think he nor the Triangle were as great as he thinks they were.

Thats your opinion. Thing is, he has 11 rings in 20 years. Your opinion is he is concerned with his legacy. Thats just you. You have no facts to back that statement up. All winning coaches have great players. Not a man on the list of multiple winning coach's lack talent. Most had MVP's in fact. This is you and only you. Winning teams have winning GM's, Winning owners, Winning water boys, winning medical staff, training staff, Winning players, Winning bus drivers......etc etc..........and coach is a part of that. Dude has not done the job yet, but you can't call him anything but a champ as a player, and a 11 time winning coach. Dude has been a part of it all. You can have your opinion, but you can't refute what is.

Knicks1248:
1. Dolan should be more involved! 2. Why would any knick fan want pick 8, when that spot has a history of producing marginal NBA taken. (He prefers pick 9th instead)

The king of the triangle is gesturing at accountability while passing the buck — and alienating his team’s longest-tenured player

In March 2014, when James Dolan, the rumpled regional cable empire heir and owner of the Knicks, hired Phil Jackson, the move was simultaneously the team’s best hope at a return to relevance and a philosophical dead end. Best hope because Jackson’s unparalleled résumé of 11 NBA championships brought much-needed gravitas to the three-ring clown orgy Knicks, a team that had once considered the tottering zombie Andrea Bargnani as a building block of a championship squad. Dead end because the Knicks’ raison d’etre has always been the acquisition of big names — even if those big names are past their prime. Few come larger or more respected than Phil, and optimistic Knicks fans talked themselves into their peyote-loving savior. The subtext of the hire was this question: What would happen if even the winningest coach in NBA history — the man who shepherded Jordan and Pippen and Kobe and Shaq to the mountaintop again and again and again — couldn’t pull the sword from the stone? What would that look like?The answer is several new species of Knicks ineptitude: an unhinged, quasi-religious fervor for robotic pinch-post actions; a player rebellion; an unexplained disappearance; the owner accusing fans of being alcoholics; the gaslighting of the team’s best player via paternalistic old-man blog ****ery; an iconic ex-player dragged bodily from his courtside seat and arrested on national television. And the old standbys which fans have come to know and loathe: a depressing on-court product, swollen contracts for players with shipwrecked bodies, a public relations regime that treats team news like state secrets, and the prospect of losing a beloved player to the churn of incompetence.

On April 14, Jackson gave his end-of-the-season press conference at the Knicks’ practice facility in Westchester. It was a fascinating display of solipsism masquerading as love for the game. Jackson proclaimed that Carmelo Anthony would “be better off somewhere else.” Beyond the spectacle of a team’s president rhetorically cutting bait with its star, this is notable because one of Jackson’s first moves was to sign Melo to a five-year, $125 million extension which included a no-trade clause. This was Jackson being too Machiavellian by half. The only reason to agree to a no-trade was to shift responsibility for any future deal onto Melo’s shoulders. The aim was an abdication of blame; the effect was a surrender of agency. Any trade involving Melo now requires his consent. Compounding this difficulty, Jackson’s comments effectively undercut his ability to recoup anything resembling value since now everyone knows he wants to move Melo. The stated reason that Anthony needs to go is, of course, his incompatibility with the triangle offense. “We haven’t won with him,” Jackson said of Melo. Anthony, in 2012–13, powered the Knicks to 54 wins and the franchise’s lone playoff series victory in the past 15 years. In Jackson’s three full seasons as president, New York won 17, 32, and 31 games.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

Jackson cares more about rehabilitating the triangle offense than he does about the Knicks. The team and its players are simply the vehicle, and the coaches are his proxies. Meanwhile, the players, according to numerous reports, don’t want to play the system. “We faced resistance. We faced it from the top,” Phil said when asked why the system hasn’t taken root in New York. In truth, the system, lacking GREATEST EVER–caliber personnel, has struggled to do anything except confuse players and lose games in large numbers.

In addition to handicapping the Knicks’ best players, Phil has also empowered the wrong people. There’s years of evidence that Kurt Rambis is a bad coach. He won 32 games — combined — in two years as the head coach of the Timberwolves, and coached the Knicks to a 9–19 record after taking over for Derek Fisher during the 2015–16 season. This season, his portfolio, outside of being Phil’s supervisor of ideological purity, is ostensibly to manage the defense. He did so to little discernible effect; the Knicks were one of the worst defensive teams in the entire league. The team is slightly below league average offensively, and looked, at times, pretty good on that side, especially when they weren’t running the triangle. Rambis is secure, though, despite all of this because, Jackson says, “Kurt has all the knowledge I have.” Which, again, is knowledge that’s been proved mostly useless in today’s NBA.

Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players. When asked at his end-of-year talk what he liked from KP this season, Jackson said, in part, that he was proud of a game in which Porzingis didn’t take a 3 because “they’re a cheap way to get points.” WHY DON’T YOU WANT YOUR TEAM GETTING CHEAP POINTS, JACKSON? The Houston Rockets are one of the best teams in the league based wholly on a strategy of let’s just go for all the cheapest baskets. The Knicks are in disarray, their players are in revolt, and their brightest young talent is already looking elsewhere. This guy should be fired immediately.

Allow me to sprinkle a few more choice Jackson quotes from his recent press conference on this feces sandwich that is the New York Knicks organization.On Joakim Noah, whose body is disintegrating like a sand castle at high tide, and who still has three years remaining on the deal Phil signed him to: “He’s 31. He’s still relatively young.”

On Derrick Rose, who is bad and disappeared at one point: “Someone told me today that he’s still a leading guy in the league in scoring in the paint.”

On the triangle: “Somehow or another we got completely off course here in the idea that a system of basketball, particularly the triangle offensive, is an impediment to a basketball team. It’s not an impediment.” Phil’s Knicks have never made the playoffs and his players don’t want to play the triangle.On his players: “There’s some rebelliousness to this team.”

The last quote gets to the heart of it. Teams are made up of individuals with their own goals. If Jackson hasn’t been able to convince them, by now, that the triangle would benefit them — that it could make them better players, or at least help them land that next contract — then the failure is his. Not theirs. Time for Phil to go.

Would agree that Phil is more concerned about his true Legacy, the Triangle and not the Knicks. His biggest crutch, in spite of winning so many rings, is people like us saying it was not his coaching but rather having some of the best players of All Time. Think he is trying to remove all doubt. I still think he was a good coach. But just dont think he nor the Triangle were as great as he thinks they were.

Thats your opinion. Thing is, he has 11 rings in 20 years. Your opinion is he is concerned with his legacy. Thats just you. You have no facts to back that statement up. All winning coaches have great players. Not a man on the list of multiple winning coach's lack talent. Most had MVP's in fact. This is you and only you. Winning teams have winning GM's, Winning owners, Winning water boys, winning medical staff, training staff, Winning players, Winning bus drivers......etc etc..........and coach is a part of that. Dude has not done the job yet, but you can't call him anything but a champ as a player, and a 11 time winning coach. Dude has been a part of it all. You can have your opinion, but you can't refute what is.

11 rings in 20 years... so we stopped the counter in 2010? Sounds about right. Hey, this team Phil built would've been pretty good in 2010! Unfortunately, time moves forward, the game evolves. The team that made the second most three pointers in 2010 would be dead last in the league in 2017. Is the proliferation of the three the best thing for the purity of the game? Maybe not and you sense Phil chafing at that. But to ignore is to shoot yourself in the foot. How many games did we lose by 3 points or 5 points this year? What if the reason we had a losing record wasn't Melo or Rose's defensive effort (which, hey, isn't great, but is it really that much worse than say Harden's or Tim Hardaway Jr's? I've watched those guys and a lot of others and I'm gonna say no. Is Isaiah Thomas a lockdown defender? nope.)... maybe the reason we lost those close games is we're 25th in the league in 3pt rate and we're not the Spurs in terms of execution or talent level.

But what if we were say 5th in the league in 3pt attempts with Courtney Lee, Melo, and KP in the starting lineup? And Kuz, Lance, Sasha, Ron off the bench? There are some decent outside shooters on this team. If the offense had been tweaked to allow for more 3pt shots I think we'd have won a lot more games. I believe we lost something like 8 games by 3pts or less in January alone. You can say that's effort, but the rest of the league uses analytics to get them some of those "cheap baskets" Phil disdains so much. Guess what? Cheap baskets are good! Free throws are good. 3pt shots are good! Those are free points and they add up and the rest of the league knows this. There's no degree of difficulty bonus and there's no purity test for your points or the Rockets would be disbarred from the league. Instead, they have the third best record in the entire leage with a pretty so so roster that can shoot the bejesus out of a three pointer.

I had hopes for Hornacek because I thought he'd be allowed to tweak and modernize the Triangle. Any way you slice it, Phil took that power out of Hornacek's hands and put the offense back in Rambis's and Phil's hands. If nothing else, it absolutely makes Jeff H a useless apendage on this team and that power stripping of him, I think, is why you hear about rebellion and lack of defensive effort. How's the guy who's not really in charge gonna demand defensive effort. The players know they don't have to listen to him because he doesn't have the respect of his boss.

You guys keep blathering on about the rings the rings the rings, the lord of the rings, Nalod now spends all his time looking at gollum pictures on the internet and tells me I'm the one who's obsessed with rings. Uh huh.

Imagine for a second Phil didn't have any rings as a coach. Would that change your opinion of how he'd run the team in his first three years?

The king of the triangle is gesturing at accountability while passing the buck — and alienating his team’s longest-tenured player

In March 2014, when James Dolan, the rumpled regional cable empire heir and owner of the Knicks, hired Phil Jackson, the move was simultaneously the team’s best hope at a return to relevance and a philosophical dead end. Best hope because Jackson’s unparalleled résumé of 11 NBA championships brought much-needed gravitas to the three-ring clown orgy Knicks, a team that had once considered the tottering zombie Andrea Bargnani as a building block of a championship squad. Dead end because the Knicks’ raison d’etre has always been the acquisition of big names — even if those big names are past their prime. Few come larger or more respected than Phil, and optimistic Knicks fans talked themselves into their peyote-loving savior. The subtext of the hire was this question: What would happen if even the winningest coach in NBA history — the man who shepherded Jordan and Pippen and Kobe and Shaq to the mountaintop again and again and again — couldn’t pull the sword from the stone? What would that look like?The answer is several new species of Knicks ineptitude: an unhinged, quasi-religious fervor for robotic pinch-post actions; a player rebellion; an unexplained disappearance; the owner accusing fans of being alcoholics; the gaslighting of the team’s best player via paternalistic old-man blog ****ery; an iconic ex-player dragged bodily from his courtside seat and arrested on national television. And the old standbys which fans have come to know and loathe: a depressing on-court product, swollen contracts for players with shipwrecked bodies, a public relations regime that treats team news like state secrets, and the prospect of losing a beloved player to the churn of incompetence.

On April 14, Jackson gave his end-of-the-season press conference at the Knicks’ practice facility in Westchester. It was a fascinating display of solipsism masquerading as love for the game. Jackson proclaimed that Carmelo Anthony would “be better off somewhere else.” Beyond the spectacle of a team’s president rhetorically cutting bait with its star, this is notable because one of Jackson’s first moves was to sign Melo to a five-year, $125 million extension which included a no-trade clause. This was Jackson being too Machiavellian by half. The only reason to agree to a no-trade was to shift responsibility for any future deal onto Melo’s shoulders. The aim was an abdication of blame; the effect was a surrender of agency. Any trade involving Melo now requires his consent. Compounding this difficulty, Jackson’s comments effectively undercut his ability to recoup anything resembling value since now everyone knows he wants to move Melo. The stated reason that Anthony needs to go is, of course, his incompatibility with the triangle offense. “We haven’t won with him,” Jackson said of Melo. Anthony, in 2012–13, powered the Knicks to 54 wins and the franchise’s lone playoff series victory in the past 15 years. In Jackson’s three full seasons as president, New York won 17, 32, and 31 games.

Jackson isn’t wrong about Melo’s weaknesses. That’s what makes his comments interesting. Melo clutches the ball like a beloved family heirloom and is a mostly indifferent defender. Even if the rest of the team was interested in the ancient and robotic collection of post-ups and cuts known as the triangle offense (and there is no evidence that they are interested and a lot that they are not), Jackson’s preferred system would run aground on the reef of Melo’s #StayMelo style. In the abstract, the triangle’s principle aims of ball and player movement are objectively good for a basketball team. The irony is that Jackson pursues his egalitarian aims in single-minded, dictatorial fashion.

Jackson cares more about rehabilitating the triangle offense than he does about the Knicks. The team and its players are simply the vehicle, and the coaches are his proxies. Meanwhile, the players, according to numerous reports, don’t want to play the system. “We faced resistance. We faced it from the top,” Phil said when asked why the system hasn’t taken root in New York. In truth, the system, lacking GREATEST EVER–caliber personnel, has struggled to do anything except confuse players and lose games in large numbers.

In addition to handicapping the Knicks’ best players, Phil has also empowered the wrong people. There’s years of evidence that Kurt Rambis is a bad coach. He won 32 games — combined — in two years as the head coach of the Timberwolves, and coached the Knicks to a 9–19 record after taking over for Derek Fisher during the 2015–16 season. This season, his portfolio, outside of being Phil’s supervisor of ideological purity, is ostensibly to manage the defense. He did so to little discernible effect; the Knicks were one of the worst defensive teams in the entire league. The team is slightly below league average offensively, and looked, at times, pretty good on that side, especially when they weren’t running the triangle. Rambis is secure, though, despite all of this because, Jackson says, “Kurt has all the knowledge I have.” Which, again, is knowledge that’s been proved mostly useless in today’s NBA.

Most troubling for Knicks fans is the apparent unhappiness of Kristaps Porzingis. KP skipped his exit interview with Jackson in protest of the team’s dysfunction. The Latvian’s growth stalled noticeably this season. Nonexistent player development is a longtime Knicks specialty. The team has quietly drafted very well in the Dolan era. There are a raft of Knicks draftees playing major roles in this year’s playoffs — Nene, Trevor Ariza, Channing Frye, David Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. (!!!) — whom the Knicks, for one reason or another, felt the need to trade, release, or let walk. Phil’s mission — to resurrect the triangle offense within the two years of his contract extension — compounds the team’s existing issues with young players. When asked at his end-of-year talk what he liked from KP this season, Jackson said, in part, that he was proud of a game in which Porzingis didn’t take a 3 because “they’re a cheap way to get points.” WHY DON’T YOU WANT YOUR TEAM GETTING CHEAP POINTS, JACKSON? The Houston Rockets are one of the best teams in the league based wholly on a strategy of let’s just go for all the cheapest baskets. The Knicks are in disarray, their players are in revolt, and their brightest young talent is already looking elsewhere. This guy should be fired immediately.

Allow me to sprinkle a few more choice Jackson quotes from his recent press conference on this feces sandwich that is the New York Knicks organization.On Joakim Noah, whose body is disintegrating like a sand castle at high tide, and who still has three years remaining on the deal Phil signed him to: “He’s 31. He’s still relatively young.”

On Derrick Rose, who is bad and disappeared at one point: “Someone told me today that he’s still a leading guy in the league in scoring in the paint.”

On the triangle: “Somehow or another we got completely off course here in the idea that a system of basketball, particularly the triangle offensive, is an impediment to a basketball team. It’s not an impediment.” Phil’s Knicks have never made the playoffs and his players don’t want to play the triangle.On his players: “There’s some rebelliousness to this team.”

The last quote gets to the heart of it. Teams are made up of individuals with their own goals. If Jackson hasn’t been able to convince them, by now, that the triangle would benefit them — that it could make them better players, or at least help them land that next contract — then the failure is his. Not theirs. Time for Phil to go.

Would agree that Phil is more concerned about his true Legacy, the Triangle and not the Knicks. His biggest crutch, in spite of winning so many rings, is people like us saying it was not his coaching but rather having some of the best players of All Time. Think he is trying to remove all doubt. I still think he was a good coach. But just dont think he nor the Triangle were as great as he thinks they were.

Thats your opinion. Thing is, he has 11 rings in 20 years. Your opinion is he is concerned with his legacy. Thats just you. You have no facts to back that statement up. All winning coaches have great players. Not a man on the list of multiple winning coach's lack talent. Most had MVP's in fact. This is you and only you. Winning teams have winning GM's, Winning owners, Winning water boys, winning medical staff, training staff, Winning players, Winning bus drivers......etc etc..........and coach is a part of that. Dude has not done the job yet, but you can't call him anything but a champ as a player, and a 11 time winning coach. Dude has been a part of it all. You can have your opinion, but you can't refute what is.

11 rings in 20 years... so we stopped the counter in 2010? Sounds about right. Hey, this team Phil built would've been pretty good in 2010! Unfortunately, time moves forward, the game evolves. The team that made the second most three pointers in 2010 would be dead last in the league in 2017. Is the proliferation of the three the best thing for the purity of the game? Maybe not and you sense Phil chafing at that. But to ignore is to shoot yourself in the foot. How many games did we lose by 3 points or 5 points this year? What if the reason we had a losing record wasn't Melo or Rose's defensive effort (which, hey, isn't great, but is it really that much worse than say Harden's or Tim Hardaway Jr's? I've watched those guys and a lot of others and I'm gonna say no. Is Isaiah Thomas a lockdown defender? nope.)... maybe the reason we lost those close games is we're 25th in the league in 3pt rate and we're not the Spurs in terms of execution or talent level.

But what if we were say 5th in the league in 3pt attempts with Courtney Lee, Melo, and KP in the starting lineup? And Kuz, Lance, Sasha, Ron off the bench? There are some decent outside shooters on this team. If the offense had been tweaked to allow for more 3pt shots I think we'd have won a lot more games. I believe we lost something like 8 games by 3pts or less in January alone. You can say that's effort, but the rest of the league uses analytics to get them some of those "cheap baskets" Phil disdains so much. Guess what? Cheap baskets are good! Free throws are good. 3pt shots are good! Those are free points and they add up and the rest of the league knows this. There's no degree of difficulty bonus and there's no purity test for your points or the Rockets would be disbarred from the league. Instead, they have the third best record in the entire leage with a pretty so so roster that can shoot the bejesus out of a three pointer.

I had hopes for Hornacek because I thought he'd be allowed to tweak and modernize the Triangle. Any way you slice it, Phil took that power out of Hornacek's hands and put the offense back in Rambis's and Phil's hands. If nothing else, it absolutely makes Jeff H a useless apendage on this team and that power stripping of him, I think, is why you hear about rebellion and lack of defensive effort. How's the guy who's not really in charge gonna demand defensive effort. The players know they don't have to listen to him because he doesn't have the respect of his boss.

You guys keep blathering on about the rings the rings the rings, the lord of the rings, Nalod now spends all his time looking at gollum pictures on the internet and tells me I'm the one who's obsessed with rings. Uh huh.

Imagine for a second Phil didn't have any rings as a coach. Would that change your opinion of how he'd run the team in his first three years?

Its not rings, its "Precious". Im sure we need to put this down. I'll say we agree also to disagree, but while you might know more about basketall than I do, your far more emotional about your cause promoting (your "precious") insisting that Phil in his old senile manner is thwarting Hornacek because of his "antiquated" way he tried to install the offense when he took over (2014) from when he won the last chip (2010). If Im picking from you or phil to run the team, Im picking Phil. For all your harping about PHil, the obvious unseen would be his replacement and that would be MIlls and H20. They might ditch the triangle or evolve it to some facsimile of it. If Knicks clean house again, then all bets are off the table and we into the great unknown.

I think you want the knicks to go where everyone else is going. Phil went against the mean with the bulls and again with the lakers. No other teams succeeds with the triangle then either, except the teams he coached. He always used the three at a good rate in the past, so I doubt he wants it gone, perhaps he wants other fundamentals installed first. Maybe as an excercise he told KP not to shoot a three. Not to never do it again, but not bail from the offense with a long ball.

Championships are like stock picking. If you do what everyone else is doing, you are not doing anything special. You may fail at it and it will be lonely at times. For those that have succeeded many times, its brilliant. PHil has. GSW has, and they have amazing shooters so they play to their strength! "But Phil said GSW was foolish........" In Phil's mind, it was. He was wrong. Even the best of the best are wrong at times. GSW has done shyt nobody thought could happen. This was pre durant. But, do you really indict Phil for that statement?

Knicks1248:
1. Dolan should be more involved! 2. Why would any knick fan want pick 8, when that spot has a history of producing marginal NBA taken. (He prefers pick 9th instead)